Pierre Ardouvin at TOPAZ ARTS

TOPAZ ARTS presents a solo show by Paris-based artist Pierre Ardouvin from September 15 to October 27. With The Table Is Set (Le Couvert est mis) Pierre Ardouvin tackles with his legendary humor, issues such as the end of utopias, identity, the culture of entertainment, control over society, confinement and isolation.

Following a residency in New York City, the artist's new works will be displayed throughout the entire gallery space.

In the exhibition gallery, visitors will discover pieces dealing with home and domesticity. Echoing the residential neighborhoods of Queens, Pierre Ardouvin worked with various household fixtures, such as curtains, tables, chairs, dishes and construction bricks in order to create a space filled with emotion and sensitivity. Referring to the French philosopher Michel Foucault's idea of “heterotopias,” the artist's goal is to build "counter-sites" out of time; he raises questions of clandestinity, exclusion, disappearances, balance and precarity.

Also on view are new drawings by Ardouvin, and his sculptural series The Night Is Not Over, (title extracted from the poem “Isolation” by Michel Houellebecq). Thick velvet curtains with large printed images of caves are attached to the walls. Placed on the floor and peeking out from underneath the curtains are a pale grey cast of a pair of feet are visible, yet the body disappears within the curtain’s folds and the cave-like images. An encounter with clandestine appearances of a world in-between, blurring the stability of the limits between the inside and the outside, past and present, the space of the portrayal and the portrayed.

This exhibition is co-curated and organized by Todd B. Richmond and Paz Tanjuaquio, made possible by TOPAZ ARTS, Inc., with public support, in part, from NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; and Material for the Arts, a program of DCA and the Dept. of Sanitation & Board of Education. Support for artist Pierre Ardouvin is made possible, in part, by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S.